


maybe this life is like a sleeping mountain (waking up to shape the land)

by KeyDog (BannedBloodOranges)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Birth, Domestic, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Grieving, Home Husband McCoy, Humour, James T. Kirk Dies, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Pregnancy, Star Trek Into Darkness Occurs After Beyond, Threesome, Time Skips, Unplanned Pregnancy, damaged people, supportive friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 16:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20343421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/KeyDog
Summary: She'd wrapped up the pregnancy tests in the see-through plastic they had come in, buried them beneath toilet paper and sanitary bags in the lilac depository she kept in her bathroom. There was a mistake. This had to be a mistake. There was no way this was part of her narrative.It's a domestic comedy popular since the dawn of time; career woman finds herself pregnant.





	maybe this life is like a sleeping mountain (waking up to shape the land)

**Author's Note:**

> Non-profit fun only.
> 
> m'eudail - my darling, my dear.

_and you're thinking about how someone died that day_  
_the you that was so carefully planned_  
_but then again maybe this life is like a sleeping mountain_  
_waking up to shape the land_

_calm calm let it come let it come back to you_  
_calm calm breathe on out you know you know what to do_

**_Shasta (Carrie's Song),_**Vienna Teng

* * *

It's a domestic comedy popular since the dawn of time; career woman finds herself pregnant.

How more women have been here, regardless of background, ethnicity, wealth? How many women have sat with their bare feet dangling over a white examination bed, in a short blue shift, wincing beneath the bright lights?

Be it naked on a rock, or hiding bumps beneath heavy corsets, the story retells and retells and retells and lo and behold, she's the latest heroine in this clusterfuck.

She'd wrapped up the pregnancy tests in the see-through plastic they had come in, buried them beneath toilet paper and sanitary bags in the lilac depository she kept in her bathroom. There was a mistake. This _had_ to be a mistake. There was no way this was part of her narrative.

Leonard McCoy enters through the doors that part in a soft _whip. _Everything is soft here, muted, blues and faded whites, comforting sterility. McCoy, also in white, looks at her steadily, dark and unblinking, his neck too strained beneath the high collar.

"You're about a month gone," he says, turning away to tap at his PaDD. Nyota's fingers coil into the sheets, an audible _rip_ running through her like a crack in a mountain. "Everything looks stable. I'll prepare a hypospray to help keep your hormones in check, and have a report ready for any future decisions you wish to take. In the meantime, basics. Keep hydrated, rest, no extraneous exercise..."

The room blurs. White, blue, McCoy. It leaks from her eyes in furious bursts, and she angles her head skyward, forces her eyelids shut, bits her lower lip until all she can taste is copper.

"...you know the usuals. No raw eggs, no alcohol. If you want to pursue other options, I can assign you this afternoon with Nurse Chapel, and the procedure will be over in..."

The cry is awful. It tears from her in a wet, weeping shriek and the PaDD clatters to the floor.

"Lieutenant!" McCoy hisses, before he falls into view, all mangled by her tears, and he softens, like the white and blue and everything around her and that makes it _worse. _"What is it? My god, what is it?"

She shakes her head, to and fro, and his hands are on her shoulders, settled and squeezing, and he cares so much, visibly, but in that detached kind way all good doctors do, and he is turning, awkward, as she scrunches up his shirt with her nails.

He picks up his comm for Chapel, and she shakes him, for good measure. She can only manage the two words, formed through the hiss of air between her bared teeth.

"It's Jim's."

He drops his comm.

The detached air falls, as does professionalism. No more Dr McCoy, just Leonard, looking at her as if she's mad, and he grabs her by the arms, searching her face.

"Are you sure?" His voice is hoarse, like a dying man.

"Yes." She's irritated he even had to ask. "Certain."

* * *

Scotty is an anchor.

Inside his neck, she inhales, takes in the burn of scotch and oil. They are hidden from the rest of the engineering crew, down in the bowels of the ship. She so desperately needed a friend. Spock had shut himself away since Jim died, taken a transfer to New Vulcan and she couldn't blame him, not really, even as the memory stung in her chest, even as he'd shut himself away, finally closing up cold.

But so had she, brought up all her old guards after they laid the body in the ground after she'd stood on the dry Iowa soil, sweating in her full dress uniform, watching a worn mother lay flowers on the grave. Buried with full honours, like the father Jim never knew. One grave empty, one grave full. Father and son, dying to give everything for their ship, and inside, Nyota screamed.

_What about me? Us? Why do we pay the cost?_

Another link in the narrative chain she despised. The grieving widow, although she and Jim never married, never had the time to, and would she have even? All their troubled, tearing flirtations, unspoken through all that time, before and after Spock, before and after Nero, during Krall then surrendering before Khan. For all the trouble they caused each other, Jim's immaturity and her cool judgement, when they finally fell to each other, it was as if everything had faded, all the ego and banter and bad blood ripped off to this bliss beneath, how short and savagely lovely their time together was, how she _loved_ him, the awful suffocating kind of love where she wouldn't love again in a very, very long time.

She didn't need a lover now, she needed a friend.

Hence Scotty.

She's keeping him from his machines, from Keenser, from the lower decks he haunts so lovingly. Like her, he lives in his science, mind firing on all cylinders, tongue before the brain. But he's not talking now, not gesticulating wildly with his hands, not firing half-truths beneath the guise of humour.

They sit beside the burr of the engines, knees up, her head on his clavicle and his arm around her shoulders, fingers pressed in deep to her skin. There is something so safe about Scotty, a central pull of gravity in the ease of his body and voice, a solid knowledge of where he is and what he wants, and that's enough.

Like her, once upon a time.

Her hand settles on her stomach, just beginning to mound, a smooth curve into her underwear.

But the well placed plans of mice and men.

* * *

McCoy can't make sense of how and why she'd gotten pregnant in the first place.

It's the 23rd century. Shit like that doesn't happen, but medicine is still medicine, still man-made and prone to all of humanity's fuck-ups and he is certain he had Jim jabbed with all the contraceptives in the known galaxy. Jim hadn't been so forthright with Bones in the last months, as if keeping a secret, and he had been due his injection but the provisory month wasn't over yet and Bones didn't worry, for the chance of it failing was almost impossible.

Almost, and McCoy damns the word.

Uhura wants to work as long as she can, and he accepts that, but he keeps checking in to her quarters late at night, follows her around with hyposprays and scanners and he knows it's selfish, so ungodly selfish because he's her physician and alone knows the secret, but she's carrying the last little bit of Jim in the world and he needs to be close to that. Because goddammit, something _survived_. In all the dumb horror left by Khan, there is life blooming somewhere, even under the baggier dresses Uhura now wears. It is evidence of Jim Kirk and it's the one thing that stops him drinking himself into a stupor every night.

She hasn't yet decided whether she's going to keep the baby, and if she does that's more than fine but if she doesn't, that's her choice and her body and he has no right -

He feels that it'll be the final thing that'll break him. Divorces and disappointments and death crowd on his mind like never-ending baggage but this, this tiny thing, will fall like a feather and topple the whole load of it.

He'd offered the option and under no bias would he take it back. His oath as an ethical practitioner will always outlast his emotional bullshit, although now he's making the transition from distant Doctor to a family friend if his late-night stays are anything to go by, and god if Sulu would stop frowning at him on the bridge like a disapproving aunt. Fuck this, fuck _everything -_

He checks the time and in all his self-pity sprawling he's late for Uhura, and he chucks all his stuff into his chrome medic box and he's jogging down the hallways to the turbo-lift, taking a sneaky swig of whiskey as he does so, dodging Chapel and her pitying looks, and no, he does not want to talk about it.

He's at Uhura's door, balancing his keycard between his teeth, rummaging around in the box for the hyposprays and booklets before the door opens with a _fwip _and standing there, looking refreshingly sheepish, is Scotty, Porthos trotting between his legs and playfully pulling at McCoy's ankle.

"Mr Scott?" Leonard pushes past, nearly tripping over the Beagle, and lo and behold, there's Uhura, cross-legged on the carpet, a plate of chocolate cake and plums by her side. Her ponytail sweeps her shoulders as she looks up, plum juice and crumbs on her chin and the first real smile he's seen on her face for a long time.

Open on the floors are scores of vintage books about baby names, some in English, most in Swahili, and a few in Klingon. Sat atop the first hint of her baby bump is a fat, cooing tribble, which she tickles with her finger.

It's such a strange, strange sight as if he's tripped into a vintage romantic comedy, but the light is all soft on Uhura's face, and some of that god awful distress has faded from her eyes, and she turns the pages as he gets on his knees, unclipping his scanner from his belt.

* * *

You're never prepared for birth. 

It's typical the baby is immature; it’s Kirk’s, of course, it's going to be a natural-born problem. On that note, Nyota shouldn't have been on the bridge hailing frequencies, and he'll throttle the negligent sonofabitch who let her remain on duty. She'd meant to take maternity three months previous but an emergency mission had taken them off course and McCoy had never felt so tight and tense in his life, a vein pulsing in his temple, a twist in his neck, a throbbing tweak in his eyebrow. He's followed each struggled step of Nyota with a gaze that could puncture iron. She was the best communications officer in the fleet and they knew it, and even with an eight-pound baby hanging off her waist, they couldn't lose her. Poor Scott had to leave his engines behind and assume a temporary command to boot (on McCoy’s orders, dammit) but at least there is one person who can keep a sensible eye on her.

But there's an ion storm rattling up the ship, sending them spiralling through lines of starlight streaking the windows in all shades of silver, and McCoy is struggling to keep everything together when the comm beeps and it's Scotty, of all people, blasting his ear off, requesting a stretcher and hypos and McCoy, _laddie, you better come down here quick._

Warp has nothing on the speed of his feet, elbowing ensigns like bowling pins, bellowing for all them to get out of the way, because goddammit he's a doctor, not a _gazelle_…!

Ny is holding it together, sweat curling up her pressed hair as Sulu supports her arm. Water pools between her legs and her eyes are alive, angry, flashing from the slick of her face. Thank god for the pain, it makes her docile enough to lie on the biobed and be rushed down to sickbay.

Corridors pass in flashes of chrome and blue and he barely has time to even get her through the doors before Nyota starts to writhe, pawing at her bump, teeth clamped together.

"Scream, Ny," Chapel is there, dabbing her face. All the hundreds upon hundreds of stacks of hyposprays and she pats her forehead with a damp cloth as if this is the fucking middle ages. "It'll help, let it out."

He almost goes to town on Chapel for gross negligence but he sees she has already applied the hypospray and is holding her hand, a secret language between them and McCoy is _not_ going to get jealous because he is still the one who will deliver this baby, he'll tear apart any other damn ensign or MO who comes too close.

"Contractions?" He exclaims, running his tricorder over her stomach. Any moment now.

"Every thirty seconds now, Doctor."

"Every thi - god damn, she's already at full dilation. How long were you at that command chair before you realised you were going into fucking labour? Oh sweet Jesus, _push!"_

Uhura throws her head back, eyes squeezed shut, mascara running, the bottom of her uniform dress peeled up above her heaving belly. Thank god she wasn't in the trousers. “C’mon, I can see the head. You're doing great, sweetheart.”

He gets more and more damn _southern_ the further the head breaches and Nyota _screams._

Somewhere in the ship, Porthos howls.

A cry. The baby slips free, into McCoy’s arms, a long brown screaming nugget of fists and fluid.

The mouth is rimmed red and the eyes are squeezed tight and her feet kick at his chest, slime down his scrubs.

The ship is spinning on an axis and he’s in a tin can in the sucking vacuum of space, but there's this little girl and by sweet mother and Mary, she's _perfect. _

* * *

The storm has fallen, carved out shallow gouges in the hull, running along the ship like stretchmarks.

The ship is still here.

_She _is still here.

The bundle whimpers in its cot, a sharp twang of elastic to some old and vital part of her, and yet she sits. She turns out her palms, rubs the callouses that have developed over her hailing finger.

A stumbling _bang_ breaks the silence, and the doors open in a throw of light across the bare floor.

Blood has trickled down Scotty's temple and dried, but his smile is wide and soft and worried. Clutched under his arm is a large, floppy teddy bear. Porthos pads in between his feet.

"Ah, sorry lassie," He's tired, visibly, shaky on his feet. It's not a bear at all, now she looks at it. It's a Klingon Blacqua, if the six limbs are anything to go by, as is the soft suckered mouth with multiple teeth. He uses two of of the paws to sheepishly wave at her. "Didn't know if ye were sleepin' or not."

She smiles weakly. He plumps the toy down at the end of her bed. The bundle burbles, and he glances over, hopeful.

"You can have a look," Nyota croaks. She hasn't, not yet.

"Aye," Scotty pads over, and gently peeks. A smile crinkles his cheeks like sunshine."That be a wee lassie, prettier than wild thyme on a mountain top."

Unprompted, he lifts the baby. The blankets fall back, revealing a curled head, tiny kicking toes. Tears shimmer in the corners of Scotty's eyes and he laughs again, overcome, and turns the baby to Nyota.

The little dark eyes are open, earnestly searching, and as they fix on her, the baby steadies, stills, crushing tiny fingers into fists and Nyota's heart breaks, rearranges, and as the tiny mouth opens in a needy mewl, breaks again.

"Lassie, lassie..." Scotty rubs her back, awkward. She brings the child close, rests her forehead against the tiny skull, and sobs, tearing hiccups from her throat, and Scotty whispers in her ear, squeezing her shoulder. "Oh look, lassie, she's wonderin' what this all be about, I say."

Nyota opens her eyes. Upenda blinks at her, confused, and nuzzles her head in the direction of her chest.

"She's hungry," Nyota laughs. She bites her lip and kisses Upenda's fussing head, and with her spare hand pulls at her gown. She doesn't want to lose contact, wants to feel every breath swelling out the tiny body like a determined balloon. She's so tiny and strong and Scotty swears as she squeezes his probing finger before he looks up and she could laugh, because honestly? He's beetroot.

"Oh oh, Miss Uhura..." He swallows, wiping his hands on his trousers. "Well, I believe I..."

"Don't go anywhere," she commands, and he nods. Carefully, she hands over the baby, and pulling the sheets up, adjusts herself accordingly. Scotty hums, cooing in Gaelic, although his trembling embarrassment is tangible and it's cute. She clucks her tongue and he turns Upenda over, eyes discreetly down.

"You're okay, Monty," She says, and a smile twitches her lips as she sees how he shivers at his name, even as a shy grin blooms over his face. She gestures to the "bear." "And who's this?"

"Well..." Scotty straightens up and reaches for the toy, flopping it adorably in his arms. "I have no bloomin' idea, I just thought it would be a key talkin' point in the nursery."

Their laughter is a shared breath, warm between them.

* * *

The apartment is San Francisco is typical, Starfleet Issued, soundproofed and boxed. Deathbox, McCoy thinks. Air too clean and manufactured for any decent growing. Upenda is a little loaf of thing, tiny enough to tuck into his bicep as he stirs the milk on the stove in the kitchen (replicated baby milk can eat his ass.)

"You need space, little lady," he grumbles as she yawns, tiny face opening, liquid black eyes squinting up at him like tiny galaxies. "Place to run, to play. Get some good air in you, let the land be your teacher for a while."

He's done this before, changed nappies and cleaned up sick, woke in the middle of the night to find an explosion of shit and a screaming baby somewhere in the middle of it. It's a pantomime since the dawn of time, at least for women. The men have the 20th century to thank and a whole load of well deserved common sense thrown their way.

Milk stirred, he balances Upenda to the front room, only to nearly lose his shit, for Keenser is sat on the vinyl floor, flicking through the channels.

"Fuck!" McCoy jolts; Upenda gurgles, spits, and starts to reign horror from her lungs. "You goddamn spiny bastard, couldn't you..."

"Taking too long," Keenser drawls. He switches to a children's channel; brightly coloured globs of whatever frolicking through a field to an inept jingle. McCoy's left eye twitches. "Scotty said he'd be here in ten minutes."

"How did you get in?"

"Window."

"Sonofa..." Upenda hiccups, blinking at the swarms of colours on the screen. Her little face twists. "Turn that off, will ya! None of that brain rotting rubbish, it's scaring her."

Keenser shrugs. The television is switched off, and Upenda mewls, battering her face at McCoy's chest - or more correctly, where the milk bottle is located.

"Hungry little loaf," says Keenser, observing her warily. McCoy shoves past him to the enormous window, jiggling her as he does so, feeding her the bottle. She snuggles down, content.

There's the bump of the door, the padding feet of a very determined Beagle (he'll never return that dog) and a slew of Scottish swearing.

By the way they were going, Upenda would be cursing herself purple by three.

* * *

The sweet trilling of Nugget the tribble had quietened Upenda's tiny cries, and finally, she sleeps.

San Francisco twinkles beneath the balcony, living spreading stars of shops and streets, cars and houses and apartments. The bustle of the early evening rises gently, not so much noise as a comforting hum, softly burning neon in the night.

McCoy pours himself a drink; offers one to Scotty, who doubles the amount when he thinks he isn't looking. Porthos rolls on his back with a whine, kicking his paws up as Scotty rubs his belly with his foot.

"How is Uhura?" McCoy asks, gruff. The day has been filtered through routines of feeding, changing and sleeping. He's not as tired as he thought.

"She's doing well," Scotty answers, smacking his lips as he drops his glass, but a softness has replaced the wit in his eye. "She's talking to the Ambassadors. Selek wanted to see her."

Unease pinches McCoy's chest but he nods all the same.

"Oh?"

"Yeah." Scotty downs his pitcher like a man possessed. McCoy scoffs but refills it. "Gaila was with her. Said they were going to talk about career, options, that kind of thing."

"Career." McCoy shakes his head. "That old nugget. She's worked hard, you know, to get where she is."

"Aye, like my old ma used to say," Scotty slurs, just lightly. McCoy gives him a hard look. "Life has a habit of throwin' you a nice curveball when you think you're nice and comfy."

"Comfy is the opposite of what Nyota is right now," McCoy quips, and he sees Scotty stir at her name, and the pinch in his chest bites harder. "Kirk dead, pregnant, career postponed. All the tech in the world, all the social progression we claim to make, and yet a baby..." He gestures to the lounge, where Upenda sleeps peacefully. "...can still fuck you up, goddamn."

"But you're here," Scotty protests; "I'm here." He motions his hand between them. "_We're _here."

"But how much longer can _we_ be here?" McCoy mutters. The baby monitor gurgles and his chest hurts, his throat hurts, and it's not the burn of the alcohol. "All well, helping out, but Uhura is _grieving_, Scotty. She's got a lot of mess to clear up, career-wise, and that's keeping her brilliant mind distracted, at least for now, but last year she lost the love of her life and was left holding the biological material to boot. She's a genius linguist. If a career woman was in the dictionary, she'd be the picture. Do you think she'd give all that up to play house?"

A pondering silence. McCoy refills his brandy but makes a mental note to not have anymore. Upenda needs an adult with working facilities, not just a cooing fluffball.

"So Jim was the love of her life?" Scotty murmurs before he sits up, struck, as if aware of the crassness of the question, and _good god._

"Can you be any more obvious?" He snaps.

"I dunne mean it like that."

"Did ye not?" McCoy mimics his accent, aware he's failing his social awareness but fuck it. Scotty flushes, visibly angry, but shakes his head.

"No, no." He backtracks. "Just they kept it so quiet, and I didn't know..."

McCoy tsks and downs his sadly, final drink.

"She was to Jim," He says. "I think he loved her from day one and didn't know it." He swirls the dregs of his drink in the glass. "Bothered her somethin' fierce, always wanted her in each lesson. I told him to back off, and he did, eventually, but he never lost an eye for her, even when she was dating a computer at the time, and after that reached its thankfully amicable end, he didn't do anything."

Scotty blinks.

"What?"

"Didn't approach her nor nothin'. I think he got it into his head he was no good for her. All the swagger in the world, Kirk had, but he had this pain inside, the same stupid kid that drove his stepdad's car off a cliff, hurting and open and terrified of rejection, and then..."

"How did it happen, now?" Scotty has an appetite for pain if the sag in his face is anything to go by. Nice to know they both have a masochistic streak.

"I think it just did." McCoy sits. The night has a hazy, heavy feel. Summer in San Francisco, humid. "They'd become friends. Bonded over Spock's bullshit, more like, and found more in common that way, then I called off this shore leave I had with Jim because Joanna was free, and after that, something must have happened, for they came back, all smiley and secret with each other, and then I saw her leaving his quarters in the early hours, and it all went from there."

"Aye. Jim loved her?"

"Shocking, isn't it? Jim was capable of love, you know. For all his sleeping around, he was a secret romantic. Yeah, he loved her. They were talking about futures, taking trips to the stars together as senior officers. Can you _believe._.."

"Aye." Scotty's eyes were wet. "I was there when the Captain was behind the glass. Her face when she saw 'im. Like everything good in the world had faded."

It had, for a while. McCoy hadn't seen it, just the aftermath.

He glances at the shadow of the crib, cradled in the dark of the lounge.

The aftermath.

* * *

He's a hypocrite if he's gonna lambast Scotty for inappropriate feelings, for falling in love when he shouldn't. He's the one fussing Upenda like she's his own kid, he's the one arguing with the nurse about her progress, the one who switches off the manufactured baby crap and buys her old fashioned brightly coloured blocks to topple, the one who tries to speak to her in badly translated Swahili as is Nyota's request, and even tries a bit of basic Klingon that makes her burble and blow bubbles. He's the one who delivered her, tucked her in the crook of his arm as embryonic fluid sliced up to his elbows, and he was the one who saw Jim's galaxies in one eye, Nyota's bright intellect in the other, he's the one who'll sleep on the couch for the next fifteen years just to size up the first boy to ask her on the date, he's the _one._

He had a daughter once, a daughter he wasn't allowed to touch, court hearings an ugly yellow tape sliced through his fatherhood, stiff happy birthdays on PaDDs and money he remembers to send each year. He was the one that wasn't there, the deadbeat Dad, although he tried not to be, but why fight so hard against a narrative that is so desperate to win? Why fight so hard when it is the narrative Joanna will hear every day of her life?

But there's Nyota, who pulled him into bed when Upenda was sleeping, it was Nyota he'd tasted and took, her thighs pressed to his ears and her nails hanging onto his hair. It was Nyota who needed him, and he has forgotten how nice it was, to be needed, to feel a warm body and the promise of home and a child, no matter how small the fragments of it. As a CMO, people had needed him. As a friend, Jim had needed him. It hadn't been the needing he'd trained himself to displace, but it was _need,_ and he needed something to complain about.

Jim was dead, and he was lonely, for he'd had no friends other than Jim, he'd been too old and bitter and scruffed around the ages, but Jim had been there, Jim had _stayed _despite all his shit, Jim had allowed him to look after him and guide him and share drinks together in the endless hours where there was no day and night, just darkness wrapped around the enterprise like a fist.

To see Jim dead was something else. To see the golden cask that had once sheltered that great, sad, infuriating soul, burnt out behind the eyes. The radiation destroyed his complexion, furred over his irises until they were glassy like marbles. He'd injected the blood, and prayed. Jim had jerked and vomited blood like an overwound doll, and all his training, all the shiny medical knowledge in the world, and Jim had died anyway.

Nyota had fled from the bridge as soon as she and Spock had been beamed up (the latter looking like a wild thing with blood on his knuckles, and McCoy didn't want to think about the look in his eyes, mad and bad and _Selek_...)

Uhura had raced to sickbay, hair unravelled from her ponytail, sweat damp around her neck, pupils blown from adrenaline and her legs shaking in her boots.

He didn't ask why she was there, or how Scotty hovered nearby, and good god, it would have been better if there had been no blood, if they hadn't damn well tried in the first place, if Jim could have died a hero's death and they'd let themselves grieve if not for all the false hope a second stab in the gut.

What kind of rushed, mad love affair was it that had Nyota glued to Jim's side? He hadn't seen her wearing Spock's tracking device, at least for a while, and that should have been a giveaway, but _why_ hadn't Jim told him more about Uhura? Scotty knew, but only because he was Uhura's close personal friend, and she needed someone to console her, at least.

It was a great damn mess, all of it, that whole damn world. He can't even ask Jim about it.

Upenda cries and the sting dulls. He rises in the early morning, pink light trickling across the vanishing stars, and she's there, black hair fluffy across her frail, sponge skull, and she quiets as he holds her, the tiny body nuzzled into his t-shirt, for she knows the shape and smell of him now, as keenly as if he was her daddy.

* * *

The summer storm has driven them inside, into the wide, quiet halls of Starfleet Headquarters. Nyota sees the corridors, the wood-panelled desks, the pictures of history's brightest and best an immortal audience on the walls. Her gaze drifts slowly from face to face. The coffee she nurses scalds her palms, runs uncomfortable heat up into her fingers, where the callouses have started to fade. 

The bench creaks beside her. 

"Reservin' your place, lassie?" He says, soft. "Do ye fancy a spot above the water cooler? Or the scenic view from above the vintage shuttle? Me, I say the latter. Why, ye'll be watchin' someone just like you in the years to come, inspirin' 'em all."

"I don't need my face on a wall, Scotty."

"But you'll like a place in the history books," Scotty replies, bright as always, but there's a bittersweet twinkle in his eye. "Just think, lass. Ye can tell ye wee bairn all about yer trips to the stars, and about her pa, and how brave he was."

He says it so simply, so candid, and she faces him then, almost in anger and instead he sees his grief, tucked into the lines around his eyes. It's subtle and softened but full of feeling. He'd been so quiet she didn't know that he'd been in pain. That he had seen, as she had, that he could only beg someone, anyone, to come down and be there. That he'd chugged back his own sorrow like a bitter pill and had taken her into his arms, had let herself hide in the thin line of his body so that she didn't have to see. He has been completely alone, and asked for nothing.

He sees her decoding him, the pulling of the physical threads in his face and body, trying to unravel him with her gaze. He turns away; she takes his hand and doesn't let him.

* * *

Nyota's messy topknot straggles past her long neck, twisting around her ears. She flips the eggs on the frying pan, fat sizzling up a homely smell. Upenda, bobbing in her cradle, coos and kicks as McCoy lounges against the doorframe in his boxers.

"Good morning," She says, tired but happy. 

"Morning." McCoy scans the kitchen. The baby milk is heating nicely, with none of that replicator rubbish. Ah, good.

He pads across the floor, and carefully slinks his arms around her waist. Without hesitation, she melts back into him, turning to loop her arms around his neck and bring him in for a kiss. It's wet and wholesome and he really wished he'd brushed his teeth beforehand, but Nyota kisses along his mouth, his chin, his cheek as if everything is such a _relief_ and oh _sweetheart, _he's not gonna leave, not now, not when you've got his heart in a headlock.

He thinks for a moment - if he can think, he's a Doctor through and through but Ny is so warm and right - of Scotty, and the glitter in his eyes last night, as he'd left fresh yellow sunflowers in the windows of Upenda's nursery window.

He's only human, and it isn't like this is a fling, right?

He pushes her up on the counter, hoiks his fingers under her underwear and slides them down.

"NO!" There's a foot flat on his head. Nyota is hiding her giggles beneath a pained expression. "Not here."

Upenda burbles curiously and McCoy jumps, blinking toward the baby, who sticks out her fat fists in a demanding hug.

Ny kisses the end of his nose.

McCoy almost says _just like her damn dad _before it sticks like volcanic ash in his throat.

* * *

"What the problem, Ny?" The connection makes the picture stutter, fuzz in fine swivels of electricity. Gaila is in deep space, in an area where the communications twist and struggle to reach each other. Ironic, Nyota thinks. "You want them both. Then have them. Humans are so weird."

Nyota could laugh. She really could, if the whole thing wasn't so absurd. How could she impart to Gaila how complex, how messy humans were? That their relationships got tangled up like strings, could become knotted and impossible to pull apart, and sometimes you had to acquire the use of scissors or blunt force to snap it and therefore the connection became useless, feeble and broken and unable to reconnect.

"It doesn't work like that," she says. Upenda catches fistfuls of her hair, mouthing it. "You've lived among us, Gaila."

"Yeah, I have," There's a man asleep in the background. Gaila twizzles her scarlet hair around her finger and sighs. "And I say you overthink this way so much."

"It's not as simple as wanting them," She stutters, pulling her tongue back between her teeth. All the languages of the world glittering along the lobes of her brain, and all she can do is stammer like a school kid. "It's more than that."

Gaila's blue eyes become sharp, narrowed like shards of glass, and even with the twitching on the screen and audio, Nyota gets the sense she's burning the back of her head.

"You love them both, don't you?" Gaila says finally, clear and blunt, and the truth hurts the very air, sucking into Nyota's lungs. Upenda rolls in her arms, turning up her tiny face to stare.

"No."

"That's a yes, then."

* * *

He's a fool. A damn fool who should have known better, should have read the signs, shouldn't have got involved with his patients, with Jim's goddamn _messes_. Son of a bitch still reaching beyond the grave, getting into his head and garbling it all up.

"It's not like that!" She snaps. The San Fransico bridge rears in their eye-line, the coastal wind whipping her hair about her face. It's like they're underwater, caught in a torrent of unforgiving torrents, and he's drowning. "You know it isn't, Leonard. If you would just listen to me..."

"Why should I?" He snarls. Damn weather. The summer has faltered, leaving blustery autumn in its wake. It unravels his scarf from his neck, trailing behind him in the wind. "Did you think I would be happy playing second fiddle? Wow, a free baby sitter, go figure. What could of fool do you take me for?"

Rage pulses the muscles in her neck and shines out of her skin in a glower. Oh, shit.

"I love you, Leonard." She says it as if it is a threat. He pauses, freezes down to his toes, before he scoffs, shakes his head, only for her hands to catch his shoulder, forcefully turning him back. Oh sweet Mother Mary and Joseph, she means it. "I love _you_ and I love Monty and I love Upenda, and more importantly, I don't want to lose you, or him, or her."

"Now, you look here..." He starts, but she slides her arms around his neck, pulls him close, groin to hip, and he can feel all her bones, light and hollow like a sparrow carcass, bound against the hard nest of his body. His hands hover above her hips, and she's so damn beautiful, isn't she, hair caught in the corners of her lips, the engulf of her eyes full of darkness and determination and who had said there was nothing that Lieutenant Uhura could not have, once her mind was well and truly made up?

It had been Jim, who said that.

"God..." He falters. "Goddammit, don't do this to me."

They kiss. He doesn't know who does it first, but he thinks it's him, her toes leaving off the ground as he lifts her, squeezing as if to never let her go.

* * *

She's so insistent, she is, hands on his face, hot palms and anxious eyes, leading Scotty back into the flat. The lamplight plays across McCoy's face, shifting in the hollows of his eye sockets.

Her lips are soft and taste of candied fruit, a lip gloss that marks his mouth, his chin, his cheek. A sticky map that charts her kisses, finally finding his neck. He can only imagine the marks she would leave on him, the constellations of touch rising in itches of memory. He settles his hands on her hips, dropping his head into the crook of her shoulder. He loves her, so very much, wants to sail the stars beside her, wants to live the dreams discovered in their shared conversations. She strokes his hair with her long fingers, brushes the turn of her nose against his temple.

"Please, Monty," she whispers. "Stay with us."

Us? Stay with whom? McCoy, Upenda, Porthos? Nugget the tribble?

He pulls back, and kisses her, slow, finding shelter in the smile he senses, a mirror of his own, and he sighs, closes his eyes.

"For ye, m'eudail?" He takes her hands and kisses them. "Anything."

"You two done yet?" McCoy says roughly. He rises, picks up the baby, who jostles in his arms. "I think I'll get the replicator started. I'm starving."

There are three adult places laid out on the table. Scotty's eyes bulge as McCoy bustles into the kitchen. Nyota follows, querying if they have any decent beer.

Are they going to talk about this?

Upenda sits at the head on the table and blows him a raspberry.

* * *

Six months later, Lieutenant Commander Uhura and Chief Engineer Scott receive their briefing for a five-year mission amongst the stars. 

Leonard McCoy purchases a house out of the city, with an oak tree in the back garden big enough for a treehouse. He opens a small practice in the wilds, specialising in exotic space diseases.

Leonard, Upenda, Porthos and Nugget the Tribble are there to bid Nyota and Scotty good luck, as it is never truly goodbye.

* * *

_Three years later._

Upenda holds up the PaDD in her hands, squeaking in excitement. McCoy, dialling up the volume, smiles into her hair.

"Okay, Pendie," He instructs. "When I turn this on, I want you to tell Mama what you got for your birthday, okay?"

"Mama!" She slaps at the PaDD with her flat palm. "Mama! Snotty!"

"Ya gonna call him that, baby?" He smirks, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. Pendie crawls into his lap, tumbling her little legs up. A socked foot kicks up against his stubbled chin and he growls, playful, "gnawing" at it as she screams, delighted. He turns her over, as she squirms and squeaks, and as on cue, the PaDD rings, a familiar tune that makes Pendie struggle up, bouncing upright.

"Ready, sweetie?"

"Mama! Snotty!"

She slaps the big green button. A beaming Nyota appears, her face welling up on the screen. A chuckling Scotty, sat on the bed, flutters his fingers.

"It be the wee bairn! Happy birthday, darlin'!"

"Happy birthday, baby," Nyota says, so warm that an almost unbearable lump rises in McCoy's throat. "What did you get for your birthday, Upenda?"

"Mama!" She says, just to make sure Nyota is listening, and McCoy feels the phantom weight of a backslap on his shoulder. _Bones! Have I got your attention yet? _

Pendie reaches for her favourite toy, a rotating alphabet with letters in multiple languages, and she rattles it in front of the screen.

"Was that from Bibi and Babu?" Nyota asks, visibly impressed, and Pendie nods, very serious.

"They left an hour ago," McCoy adds. "Left a tonne of food, Ny. I think your ma thinks I need fattening up."

"Ye be lookin' quite skinny, Doc."

"You're lookin' skinny on top, Snotty. Lost more hair follicles, have you?"

"Enough, you two," chides Nyota. "What else did you get, Pendie?"

Holographic books, a baby's first engineer kit, a vintage _Operation! _the game, a talking bilingual sehlat (McCoy has memorised the position of the _off _switch) and a blocky starship that she spins and twirls in her fingers, making _whooosh_ sounds.

"Seriously cool!" Scotty jumps in, puffed with pride at the engineering kit. "Why, wee bairn be spoilt."

"Spoilt enough," Nyota turns to McCoy. "Make sure she doesn't stay up too late, Leonard."

"No chance of that," Pendie, exhausted from excitement, has crawled onto his chest, and he can feel the slowness of her breathing, the pound of that powerful heart. "Know me, Ny. A stickler for routine. Got her brushing her teeth between meals and no sweets on weekdays."

"Ye be too hard on the little one," Scotty peeps over her shoulder. "Keepin' yeself well, Bones?"

"As well as I'll ever be," he replies gruffly. "You two take care of each other, right? No unnecessary risks, or you'll never hear the goddamn end of it, from me or Pendie. I'm teaching her well."

Scotty's face comically drops.

"Have some mercy, Doc. One of ye is bad enough. If you're cultivatin' a prettier mini-me, I've got to say..."

"She won't," Ny pushes Scotty away. "She's got too much of Kirk, sometimes. She'll be chasing you up the walls, Bones."

(Nyota speaks candidly of him, now. The only counter to grief is honesty, is clear and accessible memory, and Pendie is living proof of that, of them.)

A comm buzzes and Scotty rises, swears, pulls down his uniform.

"I'm being hailed." She turns back. "I'll speak again soon, Leonard."

"Understood, Ny. Monty. Keep well."

"Aye, will do."

Nyota places two fingers to her lips, and presses them against the camera, in the space where Pendie sleeps, cradled in McCoy's arms, and Scotty leans over her shoulder with a wink.

"Goodnight, baby. Goodnight, Leonard. Love you both."

"Aye. Same. Love ye laddie, and my wee little angel."

"Hmph." Leonard waves his hand. "I guess you two are alright. Goodnight, and keep safe."

McCoy's fingers hover over the screen, in the fraction of centimetres between their faces, and the line switches off, black.

He clears his throat, scratches the corners of his eyes with his fists, and balancing Pendie, gets to his feet. Porthos lazily mimics the motion, shaking himself out.

"Come on, sweetheart. Time for bed."


End file.
